This case study is about the Aztecs of central Mexico, a people who dominated a vast area of what is now Mexico when the Spanish conquistadors arrived in AD 1519, but who had humble beginnings as despised nomads. The story of the confrontation and the defeat of the Aztecs by the small force of Spaniards led by Hernan Cortes is told in the last chapter. The larger part of this book is devoted to an ethnographic reconstruction of Aztec culture as it flourished in the period immediately preceding the conquest.